Clickbaits. The bane of our existence. Don’t you hate these ridiculous headlines that are solely intended to get people to click through to a page that’s extremely lame? Oh, don’t forget the obligatory bikini photographs to lure you in, while the page has absolutely nothing to do with women or bikinis. In fact, using these techniques to get you to click through to a page like this, which deals with a man interviewing a coffee cup is borderline illegal. I may be banned, if I were serious. If I’m still banned, I’ll be mad.

Anyhoo, the coffee cup I interviewed today was one I met on Tinder. I loved the curves on it’s smooth, ceramic body and just had to meet it. We met at a nearby coffee shop and I was immediately attracted to it because it got the irony of the situation. We sat there, drinking our coffees (it just swirled its coffee around itself) and talking about this and that, when I decided to push the envelope of danger and take the next step. I grabbed the coffee cup, put the smooth ceramic to my lip and took a long swig of the hot coffee.

“Oh, wow,” said the cup. “That was – that was fantastic! That was my first kiss, by the way,” it added, a bit shyly.

“Really?” I asked, leaning forward, with my best come-hither look. “How was it?”

“Meh,” said the cup.

“Meh?” I asked, taken aback slightly. “What do you mean?”

“Dude,” said the cup. “I’m grateful for the first kiss, but it wasn’t anything like what I expected.”

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. Something else, I guess.” It looked around the cafe, bored. It let out a yawn. That made me angry.

“What’s going on here?” I asked, almost ready to stand up and walk away. “One minute you’re all hot and flustered, and the next, you’re cold as ice.”

Well, I walked away. Though the coffee cup was definitely date-able, I didn’t want to keep a microwave oven in my bedroom and die of radiation poisoning if I didn’t die of a heart attack after seeing the power bills.

Every grown person whose above the age of 18 believes that ‘people-watching’ is a favorite hobby of theirs. No matter who they are or what they do, when you ask them what their favorite pastime is, they will answer, “People watching.”

It’s no secret that everyone wants to be cool. I have been there myself and done those stupid things in the hope of being considered one of the cool ones. Fortunately for me, I did not have to try too hard. Surprisingly, a large number of my friends tried too hard and crashed and burned spectacularly. One of the things I’ve never tried to do, or claim to have done, is people-watching at a coffee shop.

“How could you not? You’re an author. Don’t you ‘observe’ people and use them for your characters? It’s almost second nature for an author to people-watch!” said a stricken friend of mine, who just could not believe her ears when I told her of my indifference to the sport. So, to soothe her, and more importantly, to see what the fuss was all about, I decided to try it out. I went to a coffee shop in town where I normally hang out, and sat in a corner by myself. I ordered up some fries and a soda and got down to people-watching.

I saw a couple in the other corner cuddling and whispering sweet nothings into each others’ ears. The guy was ugly and the woman didn’t warrant a second glance. The owner of the cafe, a cool-guy-wannabe, sat at another table with a bunch of his friends and talked loudly about the traffic and the government’s indifference. The waiter was one of those North-eastern implants who didn’t know a word of either English, Hindi or Kannada. I used a complicated hand gesture and ordered a chicken sandwich.

An hour became two and two became three. There was just one guy who entered the coffee shop and he looked as malnourished as a piece of chalk. The lovelorn couple got tired of their foreplay and left in a hurry for some privacy, I’m sure. And then, nothing happened.

I lost a perfectly good evening of my life, trying to do something that was supposed to be interesting. I should stick to abusing people and slandering them on my blog. That’s what makes me cool.

Vijay was right – I should get back to serious posts now that I’m out of my holiday mood. So, I decided to tackle the most serious issue plaguing mankind at present – The Eternal Hotness Of The Coffee Cup.

I know many of you will empathize with my situation with reference to the cup of coffee. My cubicle is quite some distance away from the pantry, and by the time I make the trip back with a cup of hot coffee, the beverage would have become lukewarm, thus ruining my dreams of writing a book, dreaming up characters and plots and themes and story lines while sipping hot coffee.

It’s quite frustrating, especially when you’re a writer. And especially when you have two books in the pipeline and the deadline fast approaching. I tried running with the coffee back to my cubicle and ended up scalding my crotch. Next, I tried to take longer strides to reach my cubicle faster and ended up pulling a crotch muscle. I tried skateboarding back to my cubicle, but I ended up with a bad knee and the wise thought that I needed a skateboard to accomplish that feat. I tried placing the cup on the floor and pushing it with all my strength and running behind it and pushing it again as soon as it stopped, but I skidded on the coffee spill and fell head over heels, literally.

I had visions of myself, sitting at my desk, pecking away at the keyboard and occasionally reaching out for the cup of hot coffee. I had dreams of raising my cup in a toast to the screen whenever a character in the book gets lucky with a girl or other such happy moments. I had dreams of licking the rim of the cup while thinking (Um, did I just say that out loud?). I had dreams of being the caffeine-nicotine writer dude. I saw all these dreams vaporizing in thin air, much like the elusive latent heat…

I almost gave up with frustration pretty soon, when I had a brainwave.

4:09 pm – I bought a couple of packs of chewing gum at a roadside store, paid with a hundred-rupee note and got ninety rupees back, including a 50-rupee note.

4:20 pm – I’m driving in heavy traffic towards Barista to meet a friend and have a cup of coffee.

4:32 pm – I stop to pick up some smokes at some other roadside store and pay the guy ten bucks.

4:59 pm – I think to myself as I’m parking my Mom’s old, worn-out Luna that I need to fill up a water bottle with fifty bucks’ worth fuel for my bike, whose tank was bone dry.

5:45 pm – Rags and I leave Barista and walk over to the gas station across the street.

5:47 pm – The attendant fills up the water bottle with fuel and I open my wallet to pay him…

What happened next was a complete shock to me. There was no money in my wallet. There should’ve been close to sixty bucks in there, and all I saw was some dirty old ten-rupee note. I gulped and looked at Rags. She pitied me and gave me the money for the fuel.

I called the Hardy Boys to investigate the crime, and they came promptly at around ten in the night. We ended up getting drunk and woke up this morning not knowing why I had called them.